


falling away with you

by jetpackcrows (starglowed)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, i am fluffy trash tbh, lots of flower crowns and stars and cheesiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 10:57:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4663992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starglowed/pseuds/jetpackcrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>hinata takes kageyama to his secret place, somewhere only they know, and they discuss their fears with stars in their eyes and moonlight lingering on their lips.</p><blockquote>
  <p>“here,” hinata says after a while, “tilt your head down a bit?”<br/>“um, okay,” you say, and hinata carefully places the tangle of twigs and leaves onto your head like a crown; sucking in a breath sharply like he shouldn't be coming this close to you, shouldn't even be talking to you outside of volleyball. but he is, and you don't regret a second of it, and he's pointedly glaring at the ground with his face dusted pink as he moves away slightly.<br/><em>beautiful.</em><br/></p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	falling away with you

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: this is a _really_ old fic so don't judge me thanks
> 
> experimenting with second person for the first time?? pls let it turn out okay!! i hope you enjoy!!
> 
> {lowercase intended + title taken from "falling away with you" by muse}  
> {tumblr: jetpackcrows}

it's january when you realise that you like hinata.  
  
there are traces of sugar-spun words digging into the tip of your tongue like silver-tipped lightning, phantom clouds of rain lining your lungs like the hurricanes brewing in your soul. your veins have crumbled in on themselves, as delicate and as porcelain-light as the depths of your heart that have slowly become so vulnerable, slowly, _slowly,_  then all at once; and it hits you like a thousand bullets scorching into your spine, like a thousand bullets crashing you into a far-away horizon when you hadn't before even glanced upon the skylines.  
  
_(it terrifies you.)_  
  
you think fearfully to yourself that hinata's like a fucking _thunderstorm_ in the way that he's tugging you somewhere against your will right now, long after practice has finished and the hands of the clock have kissed the number eight, long after the sun has dissolved in the sky and the clouds have turned into swirling watercolour washes of twilight. it's dark outside, and you feel like you're blowing out fragments of whisper-blue smoke for every shattered breath that you let go of; and you spin in the fragility of the dusk and the quiet smile gracing hinata's face, round and round and round and _round_ till you're giddy and gone with it all, hypnotised as his entire being glows in the ultraviolet darkness.  
  
and, and you think _again_ that hinata’s a thunderstorm in the way that he's lacing his fingers through yours as though it _isn't_ causing an electric current to jolt through your body, in the way that he's making you laugh and scrunch up your eyes and ask where you're going if you're going _anywhere_ at all, in the way that he just smirks in response to your questions and winks cheekily with mischief gleaming in his eyes. you wonder to yourself why you ever thought you'd be better off without him, without hinata and his lightning smile and thunderous charisma and startling laugh that tastes like rainy days and mondays, and you whistle faintly and ask where you're going again if only to hear his voice another time.  
  
_(you decided a long time ago that you love thunderstorms.)_  
  
"it's a secret, but it's as good as volleyball! now, come on,” hinata exclaims with a little puff of icy breath; and you continue up the hill until the ground evens out, and there are trees surrounding you in circlets of lachrymose-green, apple-flowers, sage-willow leaves curling upwards like tiny umbrellas. everything's so fleeting and gorgeous and still as you stride on, a pocket in the universe where time just stops; and the treetops twist and twine into each other like translucent veins beneath the star-studded skin of the heavens, ephemeral in the january glow. it reminds you of the complexity of hinata's personality, just a little bit, and that fills you with an inexplicable gladness, warm and honey-sweet.  
  
right now, in the silent evening save for your crunching footsteps and slight panting, it's just the two of you in the world- a passing thought amongst lingering emeralds and jewel-bright yellows, one that tastes like broken diamonds cutting into your lips and cracked wildfire searing through your throat. you're stepping into ivy-twined corners of beautiful nothingness as you walk, drenched in crooked vines and sweeping branchlets and tear-stained sapling rings that look like shadows against the silhouette of the sky; and the landscape feels soft with dewdrops and grass and flower buds underneath you, shifting beneath your feet as though you're tilting the earth on its very axis as you descend. it’s dark, and it's beautiful, and you don't know what to do or how to react to this, being led someplace unknown by this fire-haired boy; but you think to yourself that it probably isn't normal, having to feel your heartbeat accelerate with every step you take, purely because of who you're with and how he's constantly wearing a fucking _intoxicating smile_ driving you  _crazy_. it isn't normal at all.  
  
after a couple of minutes it gets to be too much, and you know you need to do something, _say_ something to distract yourself from the sight of hinata's lithe legs flexing as he walks. “it's nice out here,” you force yourself to mumble uncomfortably, as though you shouldn’t be talking, perhaps shouldn't be out at all; but unluckily for you, it's the first remark you've made without prompt from hinata, and he doesn't miss it. not at all.   
_shit_.  
abruptly, his eyes are like molten amber and melting honey in the glow of the winterlight, and there's a full-blown grin on his face, lopsided and lovely and strange as though there's a puzzle piece still missing from the whole situation. you groan inwardly, positively fucking _blinded_ by that lovely fucking face of his, that _enchanting_ expression you'd seen coming from a million miles away, and then wince a little as he shrieks out loudly and excitedly.  _i take it all back._    
“you don’t even know what nice  _is_ yet, kageyama!”  
and then, and  _then_  you're both being haled downwards by some sort of razor-sharp, quickfire magnetism, tumbling wildly as the ground underneath you gives out to steep forest-clad greenness and corroded flower petals, plants, leaves left over from last autumn's lavish harvest, plunging so fast that you're bending your backs to touch darkness and getting pulled back into the open again and gasping and laughing and gasping and laughing again and again and  _again_  till it's all over, till you've cartwheeled to a halt, till you're breathless with the rush of it, dizzy and derailed with dust settling all around you like drug-ridden fireflies.  
  
after a moment, you realise that the fall's got you tangled with hinata somehow, limbs knotted together like the jagged patterns of twigs criss-crossing above your heads; and you begin to instinctively spell out  _what the fuck, dumbass, what the hell is this_  on your lips, but he abruptly hushes you with a small finger, a loquacious smile, impish eyes. you fall silent.  
"don't," he says, simply, and his voice is low and rough and splintered around the edges, sewn into with star-bright stitches of catastrophe and chaos and disaster too orderly to be true.  
"we're nearly where i want us to be, so don't. say. a  _word_." he repeats, and then he props himself up and starts climbing the asperous tree you've fallen next to, knocking aside coils of cobwebs stippled by rusted chartreuse and ochre gold needles like constellations; and you shake your head at the blades of grass and shrubs woven into the strands of his fringe, rugged as always. you shake your head at how you're somehow, somehow entranced by this boy who’s thunderstorms and mussed hair grabbing onto footholds and ascending further, further, _further_ into the branches like he belongs there, rules the kingdom of trees and eroded topsoil and brightly-coloured blooms; and you shake your head because you're so, so _gone_ , gone with this feeling you're feeling for hinata, gone with this disfigured sensation pricking at your heart and swelling in your stomach, gone with the ache of it all.  
  
you want to say so many things to him because you've only just started to notice how hinata is breathtaking, an ornate enigma filling the spaces between your unkempt fingers and iron-clad lungs; but your vocal chords feel like they’ve snapped into twenty-seven pieces whenever you want to say something meaningful or articulate, and it hurts, it hurts, it  _hurts_. you're left gasping for air with wide eyes and the taunts of  _dumbass, dumbass, dumbass_  leaving your lips if you even so much as _try_ to communicate properly with him, and regret seeps into your mind every time painfully as though you've torched your dreams and broken your bones; and it's a fate just as agonising as that, you think, if you cannot even _begin_ to converse with the boy you like, despite your carnal longing to.  _agonising_.  
  
_(it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.)_  
  
you simply cannot look away as he stretches and ascends even higher, fool's gold- the curve of his stomach, the slant of his hips, the jut of his adam's apple as he gulps in the cold wind and continues moving upwards- and then you follow through,  _force_  yourself to tear your eyes away and focus on your hands brushing against rough branches and prickly brambles, all so you can pull yourself up with him _too_. you _have_ to stop and reach and pull, because all of a sudden, it's too much and too little for you to be seeing his skin bare and naked like that, exposed to the cool-soft atmosphere all flushed and rosy; and it's scary, it's so,  _so_  scary.  
  
"come on, what's taking you so long?" hinata calls from his place among the branches as king of the leaves, sounding irritated and impatient and almost  _regretful_. gritting your teeth, you finally push yourself to his level determinedly, swinging china-doll arms and languid legs over the offshoots as precarious as your smile; and everything's wobbling and bending around you as though it'll all snap and break if you apply just a little too much pressure, rain down in blazing shards of glass and rip through your flesh and slice at your heart if you so much as make one tiny mistake.  
and it's scary, it's _so_ scary, because you feel as though you actually _can't_ breathe; not any more, not again, not _ever_ again now that you've made that one mistake you've been dreading to make, now that you've actually fucking allowed yourself to  _like hinata,_ and-  
  
"kageyama! we're at the top! c'mon, come see, it's really nice!"  
_god_. "i already reached the top when i met _you_ , shitface," you grumble without a thought as you struggle to regain your breath, but you compose yourself quickly and extend your arms and lift your body weight onto the highest branch anyway. and _then_ you look up, and suddenly you can't breathe again.  
_oh, shit._  
"do you like it?" hinata asks faintly, and his tone is as lazy and perched and tense as the fusion of stardust, nebulae, cosmic explosions orbiting above you; and you can only bring yourself to weakly nod, jaw hanging open in wonder.  
"oh,  _fuck_  yes."  
  
the view from the higher branches is stunning; all twinkling circles and trajectories, incandescent orange shattering against the blackness and igneous crimson licking into the cityscape, flares of rainbow like scalding helium bursting underneath your skin. there's crystalline whites and starlight yellows dancing with each other in a million-light-year embrace, smoky city lights digging into the back of your pupils and swirling around in your mouth in the form of  _oh my god_  and  _this is great, hinata_  and  _holy shit holy shit holy shit what is this place_ , and you're in complete and utter awe at the perfection of it all, the _beauty_ of it all. you've never been anywhere so magical before, not even the gymnasium at the nationals; and you inhale in the stars and exhale out the night, let yourself be amazed and tired and mesmerised by everything spread out around you, feel it in the pit of your stomach like the kind of butterflies in books with happy endings and colourful pictures.  
  
after a while, you look to hinata, and he’s stood in the crook of a particularly large branch, flashing you his signature sunshine grin with hopeful, hopeful eyes. you're not quite sure what is happening or why he's even brought you here but  _god_ , it feels so real, and you don't even care if you get lost in it for just a little bit or let your guard down for just a little while; and so you grasp onto hinata’s wrist gently and feel euphoria ignite deep within you, and know that you're the furthest, furthest,  _furthest_  away from lost you've been in a long while. you're completely at ease with the world around you at last, content and  _untroubled_ , even; and it's how you've dreamed of feeling for years, an emotion that's been too far-flung for you to grip onto before hinata came into your life like a whirlwind and made you feel that way every _day_.  
  
_(yes. you really, really, really_   _think you like him.)_  
  
"this is my secret place, my other view from the top," hinata gushes, interrupting your thoughts, probably thrilled at being able to share it all with you. the sides of your mouth quirk up easily, and you offer him your best shot at a smile, will him to go on.  
"i bring a volleyball here sometimes, practice on the unsteady surface, happy that i'm able to be on top of the world in at least one place!" he continues feverishly, and his gaze flickers down to the ground as scarlet-red and flushed carmine floods his cheeks and ears, flames painting his skin deep.  
"yeah?"  
"y-yeah! i guess that's why i brought you here, i think, because y'know, i said that we'd stand at the top together, side-by-side, so... here we are, i guess! it's good, right? right?!"  
there's a momentary pause, a sucked-in quiescence before the sound of you letting out a long-drawn breath echoes among the trees, rustles the foliage like murmurs of forgotten promises and lost loves.  
"yeah, it is. thanks," you manage to stutter out, and warmth is suddenly flowing your body and injecting itself into your bloodstream like tidal waves, like mountains, like sun-soaked happiness and the beauty of hinata's form soaring in the air mid-flight. "i... i appreciate that. a lot."  
  
hinata just squints and beams and nods, reaching up at the greenery above, snapping sticks off of thin branches and pushing them into his lap with steady arms. his tongue pokes out a little in concentration as he tries to balance it all, and the branchlets surrounding you seemingly shiver in discomfort; and so you press your back a little bit deeper into the tree, gaze bashfully at hinata's hands lacing twigs and sticks and periwinkle blooms together, feathering lush viridian leaves in circles and trajectories like the cityscape before you.  
  
you grip onto a twisted leaf yourself and study its winding veins and tentative colour, how the town looks cruelly beautiful when you hold it up to sheath the shooting stars and clouds and rays of moonlight slipping into this little safe haven; and it's ethereal, exquisite, savage, even, like fire and living both burn as volcano smoke in your body even if you try to ignore it. you feel sky-blue and held-down and sort of achey in the best way possible right now, and so you crook your fingers over your head and let the leaf frame your visage, experiencing the kind of sleepy like you're 3am with heartbreak pooling in the depths of your belly and stardust crusting around your eyelids.  
  
_(you're completely at ease.)_  
  
hinata's humming something you vaguely recognise as a pop song he's recently fallen in love with, but the wind tied around the branches of the tree makes the melody sound like a whisper stroking feather-light at your consciousness.  
you don’t know how long you and hinata just stay like that, watching each other loftily as you twirl the leaf in your palm and hinata hums while threading twigs together with leaves and flower petals. the night feels celestial and soundless despite the sound of the wind barrelling between your lungs, and whenever you look over at hinata you always seem to meet eyes, a clash of opaline blue and copper gold and lustrous silver. you like to think that it's pretty, this tragic battle you two have with your unyielding gazes, but really, it just reflects how harmonious your relationship is on the inside. after all, you think, the battle never ends in bloodshed or anguish, treaties signed with hatred and vows of vengeance; for you, it's all just muted smiles and muffled, heated stares, glances exchanged that mean more than a thousand words ever could.

_(you like it that way. it fits, for the two of you.)_

“here,” hinata says after a while, “tilt your head down a bit?”

“um, okay,” you say, and hinata carefully places the tangle of twigs and leaves onto your head like a crown; sucking in a breath sharply like he shouldn't be coming this close to you, shouldn't even be  _talking_  to you outside of volleyball. but he is, and you don't regret a second of it, and he's pointedly glaring at the ground with his face dusted pink as he moves away slightly.

_(you're growing to love the colour of his blush, now.)_

when you look back up at each other, you lightly touch the crown of undergrowth on your head and bite your lip to keep from smiling, somewhat dizzy and dazed and drunk off of the opalescent moonlight. hinata reaches forward to you and yanks himself up to sit by your side, laces your fingers together with his legs hanging off the edge of the branch; and he turns you to face him with the tip of his finger on your jaw, light and barely there, studying the cobalt of your eyes so intently that you begin to wonder why it’s difficult to breathe so high up.  
  
you've noticed that it's a recurring theme, actually, finding it hard to breathe in hinata's presence. looking at him is like feeling fire-pressed diamonds cutting into your throat, stardust euphoria melting into the moulds beneath your eyelashes; and so you see life in the reflection of the sun, ache while trying to count the different shades of yellow in his eyes, gold, aureolin, daffodil, saffron, but you don’t need ears to listen to the euphony of canaries singing inside his ribs. he's chasmic, vibrant, technicolour in this world of black and white, a crushed kaleidoscope spilling out fractures of pretty rainbow and stained-glass mosaic and so, so beautifully  _broken_ , so beautifully  _put together_ ; he blinks back shooting stars and asteroids from the belts of his vision, and his collarbones jut out like fragments of a sentence, and you delve into his smile and come back with handfuls of constellations and crow feathers in your hair. and this,  _this_  is the hinata you love, perched high on a branch wearing a quicksand grin with too much teeth; and he deserves all the cobweb dreams, fairytale desires, explosive love in the whole fucking _world_ , more grandiose fantasies and glittering answers from the tip of the north star like fairy dust, and you  _want want want_  to give that to him. you want to give it all to him, do it all for him, and you will, you will, you  _will,_  because it's the least you can do after he brought  _you_  of all people to his special place, made you a flower crown that didn't mean  _king_  but just  _friend_ , decided to hold hands with you despite how rough they are, scarred and ridged and sweaty like the rest of your relationships have been.  
  
"is this... uh... okay?" hinata asks quietly, staring down at your intertwined hands with his lips pressed tense, drawn tight like a livewire. you nod, and he perks up a little, peers out at the cityscape that's now looking to be the aftermath of an interstellar thunderstorm in the 9pm glory; all whirlpools of vivid colour and bright aerial-view skyscraper lights, bouncing off of your irises like exoplanets in distant galaxies. his hands tighten around yours and he shoots you a disheveled smile, and suddenly you can’t help but look and wonder what kind of love hinata shouyou believes in, if he’s ever sat on his rooftop counting spaceships and satellites or if he just exists caught between a daydream and the end of time. you wouldn't mind, either way, if it came to that, seeing as his loud, ragged perfection is all that matters. you _know_ it.  
  
everything's peaceful for a moment, a lingering, lingering moment. it's punctuated only by the faraway whirring of bustling roads and busy human life; and then, and then _you_ disrupt that peace even more with the one question you've been meaning to ask for  _ever_ , the one question that's been itching underneath your skin for way too long.  
  
"hinata?" you say softly, feeling the clamminess of your palms, feeling the hairs stand up on the nape of your neck, feeling a chill run down and through the marble of your spine.  
"are you... are you scared of anything, at all?"  
he looks at you with caster sugar eyes, his sunny disposition fleeting and vanished abruptly; and after a split second of looking almost shocked, he snickers defensively.  
"why would  _you_  want to know that?!" he cackles, sounding a little hysteric, and your heart thuds. this isn't what you'd expected.  
"i'm scared of your smile like everyone else is, duh!"  
"that's not what i meant, stupid!" you shout, gritting your teeth exasperatedly, and shut your eyes. you've never been really good at talking to people, not at all, so hinata's blunt nature and straightforward responses aren't exactly making you feel comfortable.   
"you're just so... you just... you never seem to be afraid of anything, at all! and that kind of just makes me feel afraid _too_ , y'know? like, how is that even possible? everyone's got to be scared of _something_ , but you just run around flailing like a dumbass and being _happy all the fucking_ _time_ and occasionally throwing up before a game! like, who even does that? how can you be so... so _fine_ -"  
" _falling_ , stupid!"  
"you're always fucking walking around like everything's okay and _how does that even fucking work,_ and it _fucking_ pisses me off to the ends of the world, and- wait, wait,  _what_?" you yell, halting your awkward rambling even more awkwardly.  
"you-  _what_?"  
"falling. i'm afraid of falling," hinata says, stronger this time, and it's almost ironic that you're up a tree and he's quietly gesturing at the air in front of you, way above the safety of the ground.  
" _oh_. wow. um... that's... uh..."  
"that's why i didn't tell you, shithead!" he wails, sounding pathetic and pitiful. "obviously  _you'd_ just think that it's _stupid_ , mr. _i'm a genius and not scared of anything_ , and now i seem like a real dumbass! god,  _whyyyyyyyyy_ -"  
"i'm not going to tell anyone, dumbass!" you erupt, a little hurt at the lack of trust that hinata's exhibiting. "why don't you ever trust me? you can talk about things to me, y'know! i'm not fucking _scary_ now, am i?"  
"yes, you are," hinata grumbles, but he dies down, looking downward at the bed of leaves wearily. there's a brief pause between you two before he starts talking again, but this time, he's much more uncertain of his words.  
"no one's ever scared of heights, you know? just... just of falling from that height, i guess. and, and i guess that my high jump's probably the only thing i've got going for me, so if i ever  _couldn't_  do it, i'd have to face falling, instead... and then there wouldn't be anything worthwhile about me, not anymore. i'd be put on the bench or something, and i can't... i just don't want to ever do that,  _ever_ , ya feel? i just don't want to fall. it would suck like hell, i know, it really would, and i can't... i can't face that kind of stuff, it hurts way too much, so... yeah. falling. i'm not into it."  
  
you're biting your tongue all of a sudden because you don’t know what to say to hinata after that, hadn't expected such a heavy answer from someone as supposedly simple-minded as him. when  _you_  think of falling, you think of comets and insomnia and rushes of emotion, breaking down just to  _feel_  something, and you think of how it feels to toss a ball and have no one there to spike it; and you don't know what would happen if you said that out loud, if maybe it'd make hinata let go of your hand and make you start falling too, hard and fast. it is scary, you admit, and thus a valid response, in your eyes.  
"i get that, yeah." you mumble out brokenly, trying to sound supportive. you glance at him, your gaze an onslaught of everything you never will say, all at once.  
"it's just really scary because i feel like it's happening to me right now, too, you know," hinata goes on in a timid voice, and squeezes his eyelids shut, tilting his face up to the cool night breeze. he sighs.  
"i'm falling and falling and falling, and it's sort of like a _gah_ feeling, but i don't like it because it's like i can't stop, you know? i don't think i would, even if i could- it's kind of intoxicating, this type of falling, sort of like a lifeline. and i'm clinging onto it, and i'm probably goddamn  _addicted_  to it, like some sort of drug, and i  _can't. freaking. stop_! and... wait, you don't know what i'm talking about, do you? shit, _shit_ , i'm sorry, i'm sorry..."  
"no, it's fine, that's fine," you say, but turn away, blackness seeping into your mind. what he's saying sounds all _too_ familiar to you, in fact, ringing in your head repeatedly like it's stuck on replay-  _it's kind of intoxicating, this type of falling, sort of like a lifeline_ \- because it sounds _exactly_ what's it like to be fucking pining for hinata, desperately wishing to be his and he yours. but you _know_ you can't reveal how you really feel about hinata to him, you _can't_ , not when you've fallen for him so hard that you feel like you're hurtling toward oblivion yourself; and so you and hinata fall silent for a few minutes, porcelain boys, silver-lipped like slivers of seadust in the sky and not breathing a word. you close your eyelids, feeling the kind of electric where there are currents pulsing through your fingertips and bursting into your veins, and you think to yourself:  _falling things can’t stop, they can't stop. i can't stop falling for you._

  
"i know what being on the bench is like," you pipe up instead of saying what's on your mind, wanting to pierce through the awkward atmosphere, recognising that telling hinata you're falling for him probably wouldn't be the best option right now.  
"it's shit, i know, and it hurts. especially when you're just trying the hardest you can, and there's  _still_  something wrong with it, and you can't do anything else to fix that..."  
your voice cracks, and an iron saturninity settles over the two of you. hinata raises a hand and brushes it against the small of your back lightly, applying a little pressure with his tiny fingers, rubbing round and round in comforting circles and soothing the knotted tension in your muscles. "yeah?" he says, worlds away from his usual energetic, bubbly self. "go on, kageyama, you can talk to me."  
"i don't know what falling's like, but i kind of do," you try to explain, but you're making no sense; and you've never talked to anyone else before so intimately, never really tried to lay your feelings out bare. it's scary.  
"i've fallen from the standards i've set for myself, i guess... fallen from the expectations of my coaches, my teammates. i've fallen from the title of a trustworthy setter, and of a just-ruling king, so yeah- i have fallen, just like you're so afraid of. i...i kind of know the feeling, and... i-it does suck, yeah."  
  
hinata nods like he understands completely, pulls on your hand so that you can sit together in different crooks of a thick branch; and you press your back against the trunk delicately like you’re afraid of burning through the rings of the tree, hands still held together loosely like an afterthought. the bark of the tree digs into your spine and you try to count the rings from the outside, look up and stare into the ambulance lights dotted across the horizon; and absentmindedly, you wonder what a pathologist would find if they were to cut you crosswise, severed arteries pouring out gold and poetry or veins brimming with selflessness and glory or perhaps the secret to immortality in the centre of your ribcage. _or perhaps_ , you think, _perhaps_   _they wouldn’t find anything at all;_  because why would any of your feelings ever amount to anything if they never have before, all those emotions kept locked behind bars, all the love and hate raging inside of you that you've hidden away for years?  
  
but then, but _then_ hinata speaks. and he proves you wrong in the space of a second.  
"kageyama." he says, earnestly, and looks away with colour blossoming on his cheeks.  
"you know, when i think of falling, i think of you."  
you look to him sharply, and suddenly, you feel absolutely numb, absolute zero except for the flowers blooming in your lungs and climbing the ladders of your ribcage and spreading a warmth you've never before felt in you. you watch copper-brown eyes and a smile that could bring down skylines with awe written all over your soul, and hinata speaks again.  
“you've got nothing to be afraid of, anymore, if you've already fallen, right?” he says breathily, and then he smiles, and it splits your heart open. and you realise that if a pathologist  _were_  to cut you crosswise, they wouldn't find severed arteries pouring out gold and poetry, veins brimming with selflessness and glory, the secret to immortality in the centre of your ribcage- and they wouldn't find nothing at all, either, the emotions kept locked behind bars and the love and hate raging inside of you.  
  
_no_. instead they'd find caricatures of roses and daisies and tulips, red and white and pink iridescence splashed against your vertebrae and held secret on the roof of your mouth like kisses- and they'd find _love_ , efflorescent and beautiful, hanging down from your ribs and tickling at your heart, _love;_ love for hinata, love for him and his lightning smile and thunderous charisma and startling laugh that tastes like rainy days and mondays, love for the way that he's single-handedly taken all the doubt inside of you and smashed it to a thousand pieces, love. love. _love_.  
and suddenly- "relax, kageyama, it's fine," you hear hinata mouth huskily against your ear, catching a glimpse of him before he wraps himself around you in a serpentine embrace- and he's chasmic, vibrant, technicolour in this world of black and white, a crushed kaleidoscope spilling out fractures of pretty rainbow and stained-glass mosaic, so beautifully  _broken_ , so beautifully  _put together_.  
  
_(yes. you think you love him.)_  
  
"just let go." he says to you, quietly.  
"let go, because falling doesn't have to be _either_ one of our fears, now that we've both done it, alright?  _let go_."  
and so you do. you let go of everything, everything in the entire universe, everything that's ever filled you with false hope or crushed you inside or made you feel like you don't deserve the love you need.   
you let go of everything.  
everything, except hinata's hand.


End file.
